


exposed

by noblealice



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Blindness, Community: schmoop_bingo, F/M, Holding Hands, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-29
Updated: 2011-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblealice/pseuds/noblealice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan knows he really shouldn’t be this happy about his partner being temporarily blind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	exposed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt “kissing it better” on my schmoop_bingo card.
> 
> I need to send out a HUGE thank you to my tireless beta who has to keep fixing the SAME mistakes over and over yet never turns me down when I need her! If you like this at all, go give hjea a hug!

The easiest part of their day so far had been tracking this anomaly deep into the forest. Apparently when seventy-five percent of your town borders coastline, it’s tough to track an entity the locals are calling "The Sandman." But the winds were beginning to pick up, swaying the pines with a force that would normally have signalled a large gale storm. Nathan could see that the sky above the canopy was still bright blue and unholstered his gun.

Audrey had circled around a particularly dense patch of brush and was back within hearing distance. He signalled to her for quiet. They advanced silently, weapons drawn as the piles of sand began to resemble dunes. Nathan made the mistake of clicking off his safety, which was loud enough to alert whoever had been behind this latest string of attacks and vandalism. He felt himself being lifted off the ground by a strong gust of wind, and crashed his torso into the trunk of a sturdy oak, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

"Nathan!" He could vaguely hear Audrey cry through the whistling wind, but he was soon covering his head with his arms for protection. He heard a muffled shot before he passed out.

When he came to, he got up with a groan, groping around for Audrey. He found her crying only a few dozen feet away, her hands shaking.

"Nathan? I can’t---I can’t...."

"Shhh, it’s going to be okay."

"Nathan, I can’t _see_."

 

\---

 

Audrey had exposed her eyes to the sand whipping past in a whirlwind in order to get in a proper shot. She had squinted to sight the center of the man-shaped sand thing and had paid the price with dust-scratched corneas.

Luckily, all assurances had been made that her eyes would heal quickly after a week of rest the bandages and until then she only had to wear light, gauzy bandages that were easily removed for her daily eye drops.

Of course, no one ever said that his partner was capable of taking a few days off to rest. In typical Audrey fashion, she refused to take sick leave and forced Nathan to come pick her up and drive her to work every day, despite his protests.

"I can’t leave Haven in the hands of the impaired!" She argued, hands flying up, nearly knocking Julia in the eye.

Nathan stared hard at his boots. Audrey had never made any comment before that implied she found him lacking due to his Idiopathic Neuropathy, but maybe that was because she had always had all five senses to back him up.

Julia had been listening in while they’d been bickering, an amused smile on her face. "You do know that you now fall into the ‘impaired’ category don’t you?"

"What? Because of my sight! I’ve still got everything that counts." She said, tapping the side of her head.

She swung her arm out, accidentally hitting her partner in the chest harder than she meant to. "Nathan, tell her that’s ridiculous!" Julia laughed at Audrey’s outrage.

Before he could make a sound, she was chatting again. "I just can’t stand Hank and Robbie thinking that they’re going to be lead detectives."

Julia tried to cover her scoff with her hand. She had met Hank and Robbie when she had returned to Haven; they were two near-retirement traffic cops who were more likely to be found snoozing at their desks than patrolling around town.

Nathan absent-mindedly rubbed his chest, his mind still focused on something Audrey had said. He pulled her aside, away from Julia’s hearing. "So you don’t mind that it takes two of us to make one fully functioning cop?"

"What? Who says we’re not functional. Sure, we’ve got these _inconveniences_ at the moment, but we still make the best team Maine has ever seen."

"Easy for you to say, your _inconvenience_ has an expiration date."

He couldn’t see her eyes soften beneath the bandages, but he heard her sigh. Her hand raised but she couldn’t find his face, she lowered it after a second of hovering.

"Nathan, I never meant you, I...." She trailed off, remembering Julia was still close. Without her sight to gauge whether she was still within hearing distance, Audrey must have deemed it safer to just drop what she was about to say because she suddenly wore a fake smile.

"I really shouldn’t let you get away with moping this much. We’ll deal with the Troubles together and in the meantime, you should think about how much you _have_ accomplished. Has your lack of touch ever stopped you from solving a case before?"

"I guess we are pretty good together."

The bandages on her face couldn’t diminish the brilliance of her _real_ smile. "The best."

 

\---

 

At first he was hesitant when it came to helping her. It had been so long since he had been in the habit of casually touching anyone and he didn’t remember what was appropriate. What if he lingered too long when leading her around an obstacle, or when she entered and exited his truck? Did normal people wipe crumbs off the faces of their friends? Was it out of bounds to offer to brush her hair?

Nathan had never felt more clumsy and oaf-like in his life than when he was asked by his partner to complete a simple yet staggeringly delicate task that her tiny, nimble fingers had no trouble with, but took him twice as long to finish.

Luckily, Julia was there to pick up the slack. She stayed with Audrey, helping her dress herself after one disastrous morning when Audrey showed up at the door with her shirt buttons mismatched, giving him a gaping view of the creamy skin of her throat and the peak of lace covering her breast.

He had been shocked into sputtering silence for a full thirty seconds and counted himself lucky that her chatter and lack of vision had kept her from noticing his lack of response. Awkwardly, he had coughed, ineffectually trying to convey the cause of his distress with hand gestures she could not see as he desperately wanted to avoid the words his tongue was tripping over.

Since then, Julia took over all wardrobe tasks and he was left to spill-duty, mopping up whatever messes Audrey unknowingly left in her wake as she could never keep track in her mind where she had placed anything on her desk.

 

\---

 

Audrey seemed to know the station and her room at the inn well enough to navigate by touch, but when in the field, she needed to rely on his direction to avoid any missteps.

"I’m sorry for being such a nuisance."

Since the day she had gone home covered in bruises after they experimented with Audrey’s hand merely resting on Nathan’s shoulder or elbow, they now linked arms or held hands while walking.

Holding Audrey’s hand in his was hardly what he’d call a "nuisance" but he didn’t know how to tell her that. In fact, now that she was no longer following behind him (where she had easily been knocked astray by passing pedestrians and tripped up by steps when his warning came too late) he simply had to press close to her if someone was passing by.

"This might be a bit of a shock to you, but I hate needing people." She joked, poking him in the ribs.

He squeezed her hand, letting a rare grin slip free. "Oh, really? I never would have guessed that." His sarcasm did not slip away unnoticed.

"It’s not that I’m ungrateful."

"No, of course not. You just happen to have a criticism handy for everything I do."

She huffed out air, blowing the few strands of her hair that had fallen from the messy ponytail she’d attempted that day. "I’m just feeling impatient and---."

"I know, I know. ‘And if we did it your way we’d be done before the next ice age’."

"Well, that too. You move like a sloth, Wournos. But I mean that I can’t wait until I’m free of this." She vaguely gestured towards her eyes, and then to where their arms were linked.

Nathan frowned, glad Audrey couldn’t see it. He had been enjoying walking around Haven in broad daylight, holding Audrey’s hand without any curious glances from the town gossips.

The dust storm had been big news in Haven, and with the following exposé in the Herald, most of the town knew why Audrey Parker was slowly stumbling around in dark sunglasses.

Although it was all under the guise of merely being a good partner, he selfishly liked having Audrey all to himself this way. Nathan knows he really shouldn’t be this happy about his partner being temporarily blind, and of course, if it were serious he wouldn’t be so joyous. But now if his gaze lingered longer on her now, she couldn’t catch him staring.

"And I can’t wait to cook again! The food in Haven is wonderful, but you can only have take-out so many nights in a row before you begin to feel like a whale?"

She was talking more animatedly now, her hand flying up to swipe at his ear. "I know that everyone loves Mrs Henrickson’s burgers and shun the unenlightened, but I kinda miss this little bistro back in Washington. They made the _best_ burgers I have ever tasted."

His frown deepened. He knew Audrey was impatient for her sight to return, but he hadn’t counted on her being impatient to leave Haven altogether. He had so quickly become accustomed to spending every moment with her and he was realizing too late that it was something he never should have allowed himself to get attached to.

Audrey was a wandering soul and rationally he knew that a day would come when there wouldn’t be anything left to keep her in Haven. He just hadn’t known it would be so soon. Now he was only making it harder for himself in the long run by losing himself in her.

His voice may have come off a bit gruffer than she was used to when he said, "c’mon, we got a few more statements to make. Then I can drop you off at your bat cave for solitary contemplation."

"Really? If anyone in Haven has a secret life, it’s you, Mr I-Won’t-Let-Anyone-In-Past-My-Foyer!" Laughing, they continued down Main Street.

 

\---

 

Three days later and Audrey’s mood had worsened. She had been irritated all morning, mumbling about needing space and feeling crowded. Every setback had her cursing, and the floor was being littered with the take-out containers that missed the trash bin.

They still weren’t any closer to finding a connection between the incidents, and except for Audrey’s, all the incidents were closer to malicious vandalism than to physical attacks. Nathan tried to be comforted by the fact that at least their perp wasn’t escalating in violence, but it was hard not to feel discouraged after reading the same reports for the third time without gaining any more insight.

Audrey’s job had been to phone any local hospitals to check if anyone had come in with a gunshot wound to the shoulder – where she thought she had landed her shot – but no-one had any reports matching the description.

"I’m so sick of this!" She screamed in frustration when another coffee mug shattered on the floor. "We’ve gotten no-where on this and the dust storms are getting worse! I hate feeling this useless."

"Hey, maybe you just clipped him, or he went to a veterinarian for treatment."

"So I’ve been walking around like Mr. Magoo all week for nothing, then?"

"Its fine, we’re making progress." He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she flinched at his touch, scattering all the papers off her desk. "Do you know what it’s like to have people constantly hovering over your shoulder? I’m not a child!"

Nathan was speechless, holding his hands up like a hostage in a bank hold-up. He wanted to explain that he knew exactly how she felt, that if anyone could commiserate with her, it was him. Instead, he stood motionless as she stormed out, miraculously only managing to knock off one mug of pens from a nearby desk.

 

\---

 

When she finally returned to the Sherriff’s Office, it was with her head hung low but with her bandages removed.  
"Look, no cane! It’s a miracle." She waved her hands in front of her with an uneasy smile, as if unsure of how he’d react.

Truthfully, he still didn’t know and thought it best if she take the lead. Audrey always was the better of talking out of the two of them.

"I see you finally realised that rest can actually speed healing along."

"Says the guy who’s got more outstanding appointments with the hospital than anyone I know!"

"That’s not because I’m stubborn, the nurses just like me." She giggled at that and some of the tension in the room seemed to fade.

"Listen. I know I’ve been a bit—"

"Ridiculous? Difficult? Moody?" He teased, his eyes laughing.

"I was going to say _insensitive_ , but I guess those work too." She tossed him a lop-sided grin. "And I just wanted to say sorry."

"Audrey, you’re my partner, it was just—"

"What anyone would do? I don’t know what’s more wonderful; that you actually think that of everyone or that you said it."

She shifted her weight from side to side, shuffling softly in the office. "Listen, I’m not so good with talking about _stuff_ , but I recently realised that there were a lot of things that I’d been taking for granted and---"

"I don’t want your pity, Audrey."

"Good, because you’re not getting it. Now shut up, because before you interrupted I was explaining how I cracked this case."

"Oh yeah? I find that hard to believe."

"It may seem incredible to you, but I was solving cases for years before I ever met you, Wournos."

He merely raised a disbelieving eyebrow, causing Audrey to lightly smack his arm.

"But, thanks for the helping hand. I can say that it’s definitely nicer working with a partner."

Then she was up on her tiptoes to place a soft kiss on his cheek. It was a light press of her lips, a gesture of comfort that she’d offered before, and that he’d never been able to forget. Just as soon as he felt the warmth of her lips, it was gone and he instantly missed it.

"W-what was that for?"

"For putting up with me all week."

She gestured towards the space between them. "So are we good again? I don’t want things to be weird between us."

It was typical of Audrey to think that a kiss wouldn’t complicate things. Of course, she also had no idea that he could feel her. However, if this was how she always resolved things, he was going to have to tell her sooner than later, just for his own piece of mind.

"You okay? You look like Duke could walk in wearing a dress and you wouldn’t even notice."

"Ugh, thanks for that visual." He shook his head, frowning.

"You sure?

"Yeah, never been better."

"Alright then, let’s catch this guy."


End file.
